Flying saucers in New Mexico? Governor rekindles Roswell

Keay Davidson, Chronicle Science Writer

Published
4:00 am PDT, Monday, August 16, 2004

ROSWELL 17/C/24JUN97/CD/CS - Hub Corn walks past huge oblisks that mark what some locals claim to be the crash site of an unidentified flying object with alien astronauts just outside of the isolated New Mexico town of Roswell. Corn charges 15 dollars a head to visit the location. This July 4th marks the 50th anniversary of the crash. Next week the town hosts "Roswell UFO Encounter '97" and anticipates 50,000 visitors. SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE PHOTO BY CHRIS STEWART CAT Ran on: 08-16-2004 less

ROSWELL 17/C/24JUN97/CD/CS - Hub Corn walks past huge oblisks that mark what some locals claim to be the crash site of an unidentified flying object with alien astronauts just outside of the isolated New Mexico ... more

Photo: CHRIS STEWART

Photo: CHRIS STEWART

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ROSWELL 17/C/24JUN97/CD/CS - Hub Corn walks past huge oblisks that mark what some locals claim to be the crash site of an unidentified flying object with alien astronauts just outside of the isolated New Mexico town of Roswell. Corn charges 15 dollars a head to visit the location. This July 4th marks the 50th anniversary of the crash. Next week the town hosts "Roswell UFO Encounter '97" and anticipates 50,000 visitors. SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE PHOTO BY CHRIS STEWART CAT Ran on: 08-16-2004 less

ROSWELL 17/C/24JUN97/CD/CS - Hub Corn walks past huge oblisks that mark what some locals claim to be the crash site of an unidentified flying object with alien astronauts just outside of the isolated New Mexico ... more

Photo: CHRIS STEWART

Flying saucers in New Mexico? Governor rekindles Roswell

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Ten years after the U.S. Air Force closed its books on the claim that a UFO crashed in Roswell, N.M., in 1947, a top Democratic Party figure wants to reopen the investigation into the cosmic legend.

Despite denials by federal officials, many UFO buffs cherish the notion that in early summer of 1947, a flying saucer crashed in rural Roswell, scattering alien bodies and saucer debris across the terrain.

Now Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, who chaired the recent Democratic convention in Boston, says in his foreword to a new book that "the mystery surrounding this crash has never been adequately explained -- not by independent investigators, and not by the U.S. government. ... There are as many theories as there are official explanations.

"Clearly, it would help everyone if the U.S. government disclosed everything it knows," says Richardson, who served as Energy secretary under President Bill Clinton. "The American people can handle the truth -- no matter how bizarre or mundane. ... With full disclosure and our best scientific investigation, we should be able to find out what happened on that fateful day in July 1947."

The passage appears in a paperback titled "The Roswell Dig Diaries," published in collaboration with TV's SciFi Channel by Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster. The "dig" of the title refers to an archaeological dig at the supposed crash site.

A Richardson aide, Billy Sparks, confirmed the governor's remarks. Richardson "is interested in either debunking the story or (encouraging) full disclosure" of any unreleased records on the case, Sparks said.

To the Air Force, though, there is no mystery -- and there hasn't been for a long time. In 1994, the Air Force published "Roswell Report: Case Closed, " which asserted that so-called saucer debris was, in fact, the ruins of an unusual type of military research balloon, which contained hypersensitive acoustic sensors designed to detect the rumble of any Soviet A-bomb tests. A subsequent investigation by the U.S. General Accounting Office was unable to locate any unreleased records on the case.

"We're kind of disappointed in Richardson for perpetuating the mythology of that thing," said Dave Thomas, president of New Mexicans for Science and Reason, a skeptics group in Albuquerque.

The grand old man of skeptical UFO investigators, Philip J. Klass, who has written for Aviation Week & Space Technology since 1952, said: "Gov. Richardson -- whom I previously admired -- is wrong about Roswell and too trusting of TV network promoters. After more than a third of a century of research, I have found no credible evidence of extraterrestrial visitors."

Andrew Fraknoi, a noted astronomy popularizer and critic of pseudoscience who teaches at Foothill College in Los Altos Hills, called Richardson's foreword unbelievable.

"This continues to confirm that election or appointment to high office does not guarantee wisdom in all areas of human thought," he said.

But in a show of extraterrestrial bipartisanship, the executive director of the New Mexico Republican Party is taking Richardson's side. Greg Graves, a native of Roswell who suspects the crashed object was "something more than a weather balloon," wants to know what really happened in the Southwestern desert two years before his birth.

Still, Graves hopes the truth isn't disillusioning. That's because the saucer legend is so good for the local economy: "Thousands of people come to Roswell every year to visit the site and go to the museum. It's an incredible boon to the Roswell economy. Just think about 'X Files' and TV shows about Roswell.

"When I go around the country and tell people I was born in Roswell," he adds, "people ask: 'Do I think something crashed there?' "